The demand for shoe coverings, such as overshoes and the like, has generated many designs for boots and the like.
Still further, with the advent of clean room environments, medical environments and the like requiring ultra clean conditions, there has been a further demand for disposable shoe coverings since such environments permit but a single use of such shoe coverings. This demand, also, has generated a plethora of designs, see, for example, the designs disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,634,954, 4,616,428 and 4,616,429, among others.
However, while successful in certain applications, these proposed designs have met with only limited commercial acceptance outside of the industrial environments such as mentioned above. There are several reasons for this problem. Among such reasons is the bulkiness of such designs when they are being stored before use. In the industrial environment, for example, storage of such articles is not a great problem; however, as a consumer item which will be carried on the person, perhaps in a briefcase or in a purse, or the like, storage does present a problem. Articles such as the just-mentioned items which are intended for use in an industrial-type environment with ample storage facilities simply do not account for the problems encountered by a user tying to store many items in addition to the disposable overshoe in a small carrying case. Accordingly, such items are not designed with such use in mind, and simply are too bulky to be stored in such a manner.
Many overshoes are simply stuffed into a carrying case for storage. This does not make for efficient use of space, since the water repellant nature of the material of such articles often is not amenable to such collapsing due to its memory characteristics. Therefore, this type of overshoe has problems of the above-mentioned type, even if it were considered as being disposable.
Therefore, there is a need for a disposable overshoe that is amenable to efficient end easy storage in a small package.